#Sir George Grey Special Collections

[underthecitysky]

IT was a real family affair when Stella McCartney showcased her autumn/winter collection at LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) yesterday. ECHO Features Editor Jane Haase had a front row seat ...

“GRANDAD,” shouted the little boy in delight as he ran over to the man in the grey suit with the flowery shirt who leant down and gave him a hug.

He might be one of the most famous men in the world but he was just grandad to the toddler who wanted a cuddle.

The McCartney clan were out in force for a special fashion show by Sir Paul’s designer daughter Stella, held just a few hours before the Beatles legend rocked a 36,000 strong crowd at Anfield.

Stella had chosen to unveil her autumn/winter collection at Lipa as a celebration of the city’s Capital of Culture year.

Her children – son Miller, three; 18-month-old daughter, Bailey, and four- month- old son, Beckett – were at the family event, joined by their excited cousin (lol, aunt), four-year-old Beatrice (Sir Paul’s daughter with ex-wife Heather Mills). When not sitting with her relatives the pretty blonde-haired youngster could be seen bouncing on her father’s lap.

Photographer Mike McCartney (Paul's brother), famed for his intimate portraits of The Beatles, was snapping away inside the auditorium.

On the front row were Sir Paul, with his son James on one side and Yoko Ono on the other. Next to her was George Harrison’s widow Olivia, who was in the city for a special tribute to her late husband at FACT on Friday night, as well as Beatles producer Sir George Martin.

They were being watched more than the models on stage by some members of the audience who had paid between £100 to £500 for a ticket for the event, with all proceeds going to LIPA. One keen female fan in the balcony even had her opera glasses out and trained on the A-listers.

Badges saying “Stella” with a shape of a heart and the words “L’Pool” below were given out at the entrance to guests who included Sir Peter Blake, who designed the iconic Sgt Pepper album cover, and number one WAG Coleen McLoughlin.The same message was spelled out in silver balloons suspended from the ceiling above the stage.

Liverpool singer Candie Payne, looking stunning in a thigh- skimming black mini dress, opened the afternoon show. The singer from West Derby obviously impressed Sir Paul who was spotted taking a picture of her on his mobile phone as she performed.

The fact this was no ordinary fashion showcase was evident when the models took to the catwalk. Instead of strutting their stuff these statuesque visions in dresses of varying hues of blue, grey, black and taupe played musical chairs while tottering about in what looked like 7ins platform wedges.

Amid laughter from the 380 seater auditorium, they entered into the spirit of fun as they battled it out to the thumping beat of That’s Not Your name by the Ting Tings.

As balloons descended onto the stage (with “Uncle Mike” retrieving a heart-shaped one for Beatrice) Stella appeared with a present for the winning model and thanked everyone for coming.

She joked: “I seem to have 50,000 members of my family still in this city.”

And proud dad Sir Paul, wearing his trademark suit and trainers and a Stella badge, shouted out: “Three cheers for Stella.”

Before heading off to her father’s Liverpool Sound concert with the rest of the family, Stella explained why it was important to showcase her new fashion range at LIPA, which was co-founded by Sir Paul in 1996 in the grounds of his old school, The Liverpool Institute.

She said: “It’s been a great day, especially with the concert tonight.

“I wanted to do something for LIPA because it’s my dad’s old school and I’m very proud of what he’s done here and the way he’s made the school survive.

“This show was a lot of fun and it’s great to hold it in the Capital Culture year and do my bit for the city.”

Describing her collection as “naturally sexy, naturally confidant and modern”, she added: “I don’t design for one particular woman, but I try to pick up what I think is happening around me and on the streets.

“I don’t get a chance to spend much time in Liverpool but I think Liverpool can compete with other cities.”

And what does the acclaimed fashion designer, who counts Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow as pals as well as clients, think of Liverpool girls’ style?

“I think they are great but I would say that because I’ve got a bit of Liverpool in me,” she laughed.

The Scouse gliterrati were out in force yesterday. Former Emmerdale star Sheree Murphy, wife of footballer Harry Kewell, was there along with friends, Cricket owner and ECHO columnist Justine Mills and celebrity stylist Lorraine McCullough.

Coronation Street star Alison King, who plays Carla Connor, was among the guests as was Radio City presenter Pete Price.

Dance group Flava, who were semi finalists in the TV show Britain’s Got Talent, also performed at the event.

Stella had said she had wanted to do her bit for the city in Capital of Culture year. I think the McCartney clan certainly did that yesterday.

Text copied from ohnotheydidnt on livejournal here

[uispeccoll]

#ArtsyFartsyFriday!

I’m thinking of spring! I can’t wait to see all of the beautiful flowers blossom soon, and I know I can’t be the only one. Take a look at Julie Chen’s Composite Impressions, an artist book of reproduced images of ferns and flowers. The fern images were photographed from an album created by Miss Mills, circa 1880, and is currently housed at the Sir George Grey Special Collections. The reproduced flowers are from  'Das Reich der Blumenkonigin', circa 1880, an item in the Special Collections at the University of Washington Libraries, Seattle. I loved looking through the beautiful and bright images of this book. Let’s hope we’ll get to see some real flowers in Iowa soon!

-Micaela

"[E]xamines the meaning of images and objects in relation to the activity of reading in today's digital age. The book presents images of natural objects and replicas of paper objects, both originating in the 1880s, combined with text that is self-referential in nature. Composite Impressions poses questions about the meaning of the reading experience, and asks the reader to assess his or her own reading process as it is occurring, both through interaction with the text and through interaction with the physical format of the book itself"--Publisher's website.

N7433.4.C53 C65 2015 (x-collection)

Catalog record

Artist’s website

[thepastsituation]

Looking south along Queen Street from corner of Customs Street. Henry Winkelmann, Auckland, 10 January 1925.

[royalpain16]

A Brief History of Princess Diana’s Fiery Family

HADLEY HALL MEARES

JUNE 29, 2021 4:04 PM

According to Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles. Indeed, the role of the aristocratic family of Diana, Princess of Wales, for centuries has been that of royal disrupter. This legacy stretches to the 14th century, with their disputed ancestor Hugh Despenser’s alleged torrid affair with King Edward II and Despenser’s eventual brutal execution. Clever, charming, and fiery, much like Diana, her ancestors learned how to play the royal game—and then ripped up the rule book.

“Nearly 300 years on, my father would talk about him with an ashamed, resigned chuckle,” Charles, Earl Spencer, writes in The Spencers: A Personal History of an English Family of the mercurial family blackguard Robert Spencer (1641-1702). While the second earl would secure the Spencers’ status as political power players for centuries, he was also “cunning, supple [and] shameless” with “a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirt.”

Sunderland’s ascendancy began in the 1670s when he orchestrated King Charles II’s secret pact with England’s traditional enemy, France. Securing large payments from the French king and court for Charles II and himself, Sunderland was rewarded when he was appointed secretary of state.

After double-crossing Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, Sunderland cleverly insinuated himself with new King James II. He converted to Catholicism to appeal to the very Catholic king, and became one of James II’s closest advisers. But the king, though he valued the brilliant man’s diplomatic skills, was fully aware of Sunderland’s duplicity.

James II finally dismissed Sunderland from service in 1688, and he was later exiled. But in December of that year, James II was deposed by the Glorious Revolution, bringing his daughter Mary and her husband, William, Prince of Orange, (with whom Sunderland had conspired) to the throne.

Again in favor, he was rewarded with the post of Lord Chamberlain before retiring from public life in 1697. “Too much cannot be said of his talents,” one historian noted. “Nor too little of his principles.”

The Boss: Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough

The daughter of Parliamentarian Richard Jennings and his scandalous wife, Frances, the passionate, brilliant Sarah (1660-1744) started out as a maid of honor in the court of James II. She became the most powerful woman in England, through her magnetic control of the future Queen Anne, a comparative dullard who worshipped her and perhaps became her lover. (You may remember their relationship from the 2018 movie The Favourite, in which Rachel Weisz played Sarah.)

For Sarah, her friendship with Anne was a way to advance her family and her liberal Whig politics, which she shared with her equally powerful husband, the military hero the Duke of Marlborough. “I hated tyranny by nature,” she wrote in one version of her memoir, according to Ophelia Field’s The Favourite: The Life of Sarah Churchill. “I thought mankind was born free, & if Princes were ordained to make their subjects happy; so I had always in me an invincible aversion to slavery, & to flattery.”

In 1700, Sarah arranged the marriage of her distant relation Charles Spencer, the future Third Earl of Sunderland, with her favorite daughter, Anne. Over the next 44 years, she would shape the family fortunes—and gift them with their famed auburn-tinted locks.

According to The Favourite: The Life of Sarah Churchill, with Anne’s accession to the throne in 1702 Sarah reached the peak of her power, racking up virtually every important post in Queen Anne’s suite, dictating cabinet appointments, and encouraging the ire of satirists.

But cracks would soon begin to appear. Queen Anne was naturally inclined to support the royalist Tories and was encouraged in these leanings by a new favorite named Abigail. A vindictive Sarah became a master propagandist, leaking insinuations about their relationship to the press, and allegedly threatening to blackmail Anne over the contents of their highly charged correspondence.

Sarah was finally forced to vacate her royal apartments in 1711, but she was not down for the count. A brilliant businesswoman, she became the richest woman in England, according to Field, controlling her Spencer grandchildren with promises of money and power. Centuries before the modern Diana and Prince Charles wed, Sarah even attempted to marry her favorite granddaughter—Lady Diana Spencer—to the broke Frederick, Prince of Wales, with a promise of 100,000-pound dowry. The plan fell through.

But not all her grandchildren were willing to be manipulated by their formidable matriarch. Sarah claimed her equally tough granddaughter Anne “[deserved] to be burnt,” and she disinherited her grandson Charles, Fifth Earl of Sunderland, which prompted him to write her:

As for putting me out of your will…I neither expected or desired to be in it. I…assure Your Grace that this is the last time I shall ever trouble you by letter or conversation. I am Your Grace’s grandson, Sunderland.

Sarah’s letter back was brutal. “You end that you are my grandson. Which is indeed a very melancholy truth…had you not been my grandson, you would have been in as bad a condition as you deserve to be.” Fitting words from a woman immortalized by Alexander Pope thusly:

Sixty years the World has been her Trade, The wisest Fool much Time has ever made. From loveless youth to unrespected age, No Passion gratify’d except her Rage.

The Star: Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

From the start there was something special about Georgiana (1757-1806), the coddled daughter of John, First Earl Spencer and his wife, Margaret. The captivating teenager married the sophisticated William, Duke of Devonshire, in 1774, and quickly became a sensation in London’s highest circles. “[The Duchess of Devonshire] effaces all,” Horace Walpole wrote, according to The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation. “Her youth, figure, flowing good nature, sense…and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon.”

Georgiana soon found her cold, older husband was not nearly as interested in her as everyone else. Luckily, she had many talents with which to amuse herself. She set fashions of the day, developed her own haughty way of speaking, known as the “Cavendish drawl,” and became dear friends with Marie Antoinette, according to Amanda Foreman’s The Duchess. She was also a successful novelist, and an amateur scientist.

But it was Georgiana’s brilliance as a Whig operative that would turn her into a target of the press. Constantly brainstorming with her friend, George, Prince of Wales, and political soulmate Charles James Fox, she hosted countless summits at her home. Georgiana was, she later wrote, “in the midst of the action,” seeing

“partys rise and fall—friends be united and disunited—the ties of love give way to caprice, to interest, and to vanity…”

Georgiana also worked essentially as a campaign manager for Whig candidates. During the 1784 election she bravely canvassed the street for Fox, charming Londoners with her common touch. “During her canvass,” Walpole wrote, “the Duchess made no scruple of visiting some of the humblest of electors, dazzling and enchanting them by the fascination of her manner, the power of her beauty and the influence of her high rank.”

According to Foreman’s The Duchess, there were rumors Georgiana kissed men in exchange for votes, leading to scurrilous cartoons distributed by the Tory opposition. “You have almost unavoidably amassed a great deal of useless trash—gathered weeds instead of flowers,” Lady Spencer wrote Georgiana. “You live so constantly in public you cannot live for your own soul.”

Her mother was worried about more than bad press. The hard-partying Georgiana was one of a long line of Spencer gambling addicts. She also had a laudanum dependency, and a scandalous ménage à trois arrangement with her husband and the disreputable Bess Foster. Calamity struck in 1792, when Georgiana became pregnant by the future Prime Minister Charles Grey and was banished from the country for a while.

Georgiana returned to her husband and children two years later. For the remainder of her life she battled ill health, but continued her role as a political operative, aware of what she could have been. “Would I were a man,” she mused to Sir Philip Francis. “To unite my talents, my hopes, my fortune, with [Charles James Fox’s], to make common cause, and fall or rule.”

From the start, the Spencer legacy laid heavily on John Spencer’s (1924-1992)

shoulders. As a child he was constantly cowed by his genealogically obsessed, brutal father, who considered him an intellectual lightweight. “He used to dread the train journey home [from boarding school],” his son, Diana’s brother Charles, writes. “He would hide in shadows of the train carriage, hoping his father had forgotten to collect him.”

But by the 1940s, John’s heroism as a captain in the Royal Scots Greys during World War II, and his tall, good looks and simple charm made him a most eligible bachelor. According to the documentary When the Spencers Met the Monarchy, he was even once looked at by the palace as a suitor to the future Queen Elizabeth II.

Instead, in 1954, Queen Elizabeth II (whom he served as an equerry) attended his wedding to heiress Frances Roche at Westminster Abbey. The couple had four children—Sarah, Jane, Diana, and Charles (another son, John, died shortly after birth). They were a mismatched pair, he rather dull and she vivacious, but John was reportedly blindsided when he discovered Frances was cheating on him. “How many of those years were happy?” he later said of his marriage. “I thought all of them until the moment that we parted.”

After the dissolution of his marriage, John became Diana and Charles’s primary caregiver and developed what Lord Glenconner once termed “an unfortunate raw sausage look.” Although he was stiff and old-fashioned, he attempted to be an involved father, and Diana was determined to be his “comforting angel,” according to The Diana Chronicles.

In 1975, John’s fortunes turned when his curmudgeonly father died, making him the Eighth Earl Spencer. According to Andrew Morton, he also inherited a 2.25-million-pound bill for death duties as well as 80,000-pounds-a-year running costs for Althorp, the family estate in Northamptonshire. He also found a helpmate to run Althorp in the fascinating Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, whom he married in 1976 without even telling his children. “We weren’t invited. ‘Not grand enough,’” his daughter Sarah quipped to a reporter at the time.

Despite the flippant tone, John’s betrayal would cause a deep rift in the family. A severe stroke in 1978 caused him to become frail and even more distant from his children. “He was one person before and he was certainly a different person after,” Princess Diana said, according to Morton. “He’s remained estranged but adoring since. If he comes and sees me he comes and sees me, if he doesn’t he doesn’t. It’s not my problem anymore. It’s his.”

The Rebel: Frances Shand Kydd

Frances Ruth Roche (1936-2004) wasn’t from as noble stock as the Spencers, but her family was far richer. Her father Maurice, fourth Baron Fermoy, was a conservative politician and a “terrible bottom pincher,” Lady Glenconner says in The Diana Chronicles, while her wealthy mother, Ruth, was a scheming, incurable snob and great friend of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

It was Ruth who encouraged a teenage Frances to marry the much older John Spencer, despite her tender age. “When you meet someone at the age of 15 and get engaged just five months out of school at 17, you can look back and ask, ‘Was I adult?’” she asked years later. “I sure thought I was at the time.”

The couple cultivated a farm at her family home of Park House in Norfolk, but Frances was quickly disillusioned with life in the country as a young aristocratic mother. “I’m so bloody bored with opening village fetes,” she told a friend. It was no wonder that the fiery Frances wanted more. “She was very attractive and blonde and sexy with such joie de vivre and fun about her,” a friend told Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles.

By the 1960s, Frances escaped to London more and more. She also started having an affair with a married bon vivant named Peter Shand Kydd. In 1967, she separated from John and left her two youngest children with him. “The biggest disruption was when Mummy decided to leg it. That’s the vivid memory we have—the four of us,” Princess Diana later told Andrew Morton.

Frances fought for custody of the children but lost to John, partially due to her own mother, Baroness Fermoy, who testified against her. Social outcasts, the Shand Kydds eventually moved to the coast of Scotland, and their warm household was a refuge for her children when they were allowed to visit. “Diana and I adored it for its wild beauty and the fun we had on the sea, lobster potting and mackerel-fishing,” Charles Spencer recalls.

Frances counseled against her youngest daughter’s marriage to Prince Charles, seeing too many parallels to her own first marriage—including her mother’s encouragement of the match. According to Brown, after voicing her concerns, Diana said, “Mummy, you don’t understand. I love him.” Frances replied, “Love him, or love what he is?” To which Diana asked rhetorically, “What’s the difference?”

The Grande Dames: Barbara Cartland and Raine Spencer

Perhaps no writer influenced generations of British romantics—including Princess Diana—more than Barbara Cartland (1901-2000). The author of 723 books, Cartland had, in the words of Brown, a “penchant for pink, her meringue coiffure and false eyelashes,” which betrayed a steely, snobbish character that was tough as nails.

Cartland would pass both her strength and outrageousness on to her daughter Raine (1929-2016), whom she raised to be, in Brown’s words, a “social monster baby.” Not only did she nab Gerald Legge, Ninth Earl of Dartmouth, but she also forged a career as a conservative politician, becoming the youngest person to ever serve on the Westminster City Council.

“She never took any prisoners, and never took no for an answer,” a friend recalled.

In the early 1970s, Raine set her sights on the divorced John Spencer. “She wanted to marry Daddy; that was her target and that was it,” Princess Diana recalled. According to sources, “Acid Raine” alienated the children and old friends. She also took the reins of Althorp, allegedly selling off family treasures and decorating it in her and her mother’s garish style.

During the lead-up to Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles in 1981, what to do with the clownish Cartlands became a national conversation. According to Brown:

Alexander Chancellor, the editor of The Spectator, wrote an editorial in which he called for a special Act of Parliament to ban Raine and her mother from St. Paul’s Cathedral, adding, “For it would be more than a little unfair on everybody if these two absurdly theatrical ladies were permitted to turn a moving national celebration into a pantomime.” Diana was so afraid the pantomime might indeed take place, she pressed for stratagems to blackball Cartland.

In the end Raine was invited but her mother was not. This would not be the most awkward Spencer wedding—that prize would go to Charles Spencer’s first wedding in 1989, where Diana scolded Raine for her rudeness to their mother. “If only you knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done, you’ve ruined the house, you spend Daddy’s money and what for?” she hissed.

For her part, Raine would tire of being the scapegoat for the Spencer dysfunction. “I’m absolutely sick of the ‘wicked stepmother’ lark,” she said, according to Kitty Kelley. “You’re never going to make me sound like a human being, because people like to think I’m Dracula’s mother.”

Surprisingly, Diana would come to agree. Toward the end of her life, she grew close to her stepmother, whose no-nonsense advice she came to admire. However, it appears there was no love lost between Diana and her former favorite writer, who would quip of the royal breakup, “Of course, you know where it all went wrong. She wouldn’t do oral sex.”

The Role Model: Lady Sarah McCorquodale

Born in 1955, Sarah Spencer was the oldest, and wildest of John and Frances Spencer’s brood. Reckless and salty from an early age, Brown writes that she was kicked out of boarding school and rode her horse into her grandmother’s living room. “Sarah always had to be the best at everything,” a friend recalled. “The best car, the wittiest put-down, and the best dress.”

She also had a constant shadow in her youngest sister, Diana. “I idolized my eldest sister and I used to do all her washing when she came back from school. I packed her suitcase, ran her bath, made her bed—the whole lot. I did it all and I thought it was wonderful,” Diana told Morton.

In 1977, Sarah, who had suffered from anorexia, according to Brown, met Prince Charles at Ascot. The two began dating, and it was Sarah who introduced Diana to the prince during a shooting party at Althorp (“I’m cupid,” she’d later quip). “I remember,” Diana later said, “feeling desperately sorry for him that my sister was wrapped around his neck because she’s quite a tough old thing.”

But Sarah’s romance with the prince would soon end. She made the mistake of talking to reporters. Not only did she reportedly confess to having “thousands of boyfriends,” she also disparaged Charles as a hopeless romantic. “I wouldn’t marry a man I didn’t love, whether it was a dustman or the King of England,” she said. “If he asked me I would turn him down.”

This cardinal sin would cause Sarah to be promptly frozen out, with Charles reportedly informing her, “You’ve just done something extremely stupid.” And so, only three years later Charles would begin to court the blossoming Diana. Perhaps there was a hint of jealousy in her alleged counsel to a despondent Diana to not pull out of the wedding over his relationship with Camilla: “Bad luck, ‘Duch. Your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.”

[ll-underestimated-ll]

Point Britomart. Auckland 1859. - Bruno Hamel & Ferdinand von Hochstetter A group of people sit on the old pa site of Te Rerenga Oraiti near an earthen wall (right) that may be from Fort Britomart’s parapet. Looks across to Queen St. Wharf. 

Fort Britomart was built 1840-41, and closed in the 1870s. 

Fort location marked with red dashes. Original shoreline blue. Highlighted vaguely in orange is Queen St. The road directly right to the park (large green area right) is Prince’s St.

Point Britomart, or “Soldiers’ Point”, 1850s. Fort Britomart at the tip (right), St Paul’s Church (on UoA campus) to be seen centre. Ref. 4-7130, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Library. 

Point Britomart was destroyed back in the 70s, despite being one of the initial major landmarks of the city (along with St Pauls est. 1840 & Partington’s Windmill 1851 [demolished 1950] ). Mined away with the rock being used for the construction of sea walls and thrown to the ocean as part of the land reclaim. The cliff was steep, landslides would occur, children would quite enjoy playing upon the cliffs despite the danger. 

Tossing bodies off the cliff was a useful manner to dispose of food in a way that would frame the death as something else.

[artmastered]

Tooi [Tuai], Drawing of Korokoro's moko, 1818, paper, 30 x 50 cm, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries.

‘Oceania’ at the Royal Academy

★ ★ ★ ★

I have been truly spoilt this year with regards to my love of all things Pacific: from my trip to New Zealand, to the numerous exhibitions in London covering various areas of the subject. The Royal Academy’s ‘Oceania’ showcases the art from island nations across the world’s largest body of water. Over 200 pieces are on display, including canoes, traditional clothing, ceramics and sacred sculptures, and are presented thematically to reveal the stories and narratives that have shaped the history of these indigenous peoples.

Ahu ula (feather cloak) belonging to Liholoho, Kamehameha II., early 19th century, feathers, fibre, painted barkcloth (on reverse), 207 cm, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

The exhibition covers over 500 years of Pacific culture, right up to the modern era. My highlight, in fact, came from New Zealand contemporary artist Lisa Reihana. Her work in Pursuit of Venus [infected] is a reappropriation of the 19th-century panoramic woodblock piece Les sauvages de la mer Pacifique. The latter was a romanticised vision of colonial discovery in the Pacific, whereas Reihana takes a more realistic approach to the dramatic encounters between native islanders and the European settlers. Her piece is a slow-spanning panoramic film, featuring animation and filmed reenactments. Visitors can sit in the darkened cinematic gallery and observe mini-storylines, such as a colonial artist being attacked by native insects whilst trying to paint, and a tense confrontation between tribal warriors and gun-wielding soldiers. It’s addictive viewing, though it lasts a full hour, so make sure you have enough time to experience it thoroughly!

‘Oceania’ is on at the Royal Academy until 10th December. All images are courtesy of the Royal Academy.

[scotianostra]

On August 1st 1747 Proscription Act introduced, banning tartan and the carrying of weapons. The penalty for a first offence was six months in jail and a second offence resulted in transportation for seven years.

So how effective was this ban? I think the banning of the tartan has been overplayed at times, the main part of the act was to disarm the Highland clans. That's not to say that tartan wasn't banned, just that it should be looked at more closely.

I dug into the subject further and unearthed this excellent article in The National.......

It would, of course, be wrong to underestimate the effect of the ban. It was enacted by a ruthless government that intended it to be enforced and there are records of instances in which it was enforced.

Probably the weaving of tartan in many glens ceased or was greatly inhibited (at least during the early years of the legislation). It should be remembered, however, that the ban only applied in the Highland part of Scotland, it did not apply to women, and judging by the amount of portraits of the time in which the sitters wore tartan, it seems not to have deterred gentry. (Gentlemen who could command three servants, women and boys, in addition to those serving in the army, were exempt from the ban.)

The Earl of Holderness, in 1752, noted reports that “…universally the sheriffs, or their deputies, are very negligent of their duty in omitting to secure [imprison] persons wearing the Highland dress or carrying arms”.

There is, in fact, much evidence, not least from the old statistical accounts, which were written by parish ministers, to indicate that the ban on tartan was far from entirely effective. James D Scarlett, widely considered to have been the best authority on such matters, ventured the following opinion: “Except in the hands of a few Hanoverian officers, who saw in it an opportunity to persecute the Highlanders, the Dress Act does not seem to have been much enforced.”

The point of this is that tartan was obviously enormously significant to Highlanders or the Hanoverian government would have had no reason to ban it. Given this significance surely, in spite of the ban (or in a sense because of it), steps would have been taken to preserve the knowledge relating to tartan and the old traditional patterns. It is inconceivable that the Highland people, faced with this measure from a hated regime, would have tamely destroyed every stitch of old plaiding and applied themselves obediently to the business of forgetting their traditional setts.

Proscription simply would not have brought about a period of racial amnesia during which all memory of tartan patterns stopped being handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter. The oft-repeated assertion that this was so is the real invention. It not only offends common sense, but is contradicted by a sound body of evidence.

We know from the ledger of William Wilson & Sons that prior to the repeal of Proscription their customers were (apart from military and colonial) largely on Scotland’s eastern coast. However, after repeal in 1782, they increased sales of tartan in the Highlands. This is to say that when they began to promote clan tartans they were selling them to Highlanders, many of whom were old enough to remember whether such a concept was authentic or a deception. We also know that Wilsons took trouble to seek out genuine traditional setts from the Highlands.

“Wilsons were known to have toured the Highlands in the late 18th and early 19th century, looking for old patterns that they could use as a basis for their traditional tartans”, (Peter MacDonald, Head of Research, Scottish Tartans Authority).

Even as late as 1822, the year of the visit of King George to Edinburgh, there remained living eye-witnesses to the 45 uprising (Patrick Grant, who had fought alongside the Glengarry regiment at Culloden, was 108. The widow of James Stewart of Tulloch, who gave Prince Charles Edward a pair of brogues at Dunkeld, was 99 – some 30 years after Wilsons had started to sell clan tartans in the Highlands).

Sir Walter Scott played such a major part in the organising of the 1822 visit (and has, indeed, been thought of by some as the inventor of clan tartans) that it is worth considering his views on their provenance. He is often quoted as saying: “I do not believe a word of the nonsense about every clan or name having a regular pattern which was undeviatingly adhered to.”

Less well known is his conviction that clan tartans were “of considerable antiquity” and that he believed that he could demonstrate that they had been worn “a great many years before 1745”. These comments indicate that Scott very sensibly saw that clan tartans had their origins during the era prior to Culloden.

The present author’s suggestion for a realistic definition is: any pattern that has had a special association with a particular clan, probably because it has been woven and worn in a territory dominated by the clan in question, or any tartan known to have been worn in a uniform manner by a clan.

What is being opposed here is the assertion that the concept of clan tartans was invented some 50 or more years after Culloden. It is not the purpose of this article to maintain that all clans necessarily had exclusive setts pre-45, but that there is convincing evidence some clans had tartan patterns particularly associated with them, and that in effect there were clan tartans in Highland society prior to 1745.

Crucial to penetrating this mystery is the actual experience of the generations of Highlanders who lived throughout the 18th century. These were the people who knew, and who handed down, the truth. It is a fact of history that generally only the wealthy and influential leave records of their recollections and opinions for posterity, so relevant material is strictly limited. In fact the present writer has found not a single clear and specific statement from any such person denying the existence of clan tartans prior to 1745.

On the other hand, evidence by statement or by implication to the effect that clan tartans were a reality of the Jacobite era is not difficult to come by.

Anne MacVicar was born in Lochawe, Argyll, in 1755. This was during the period of the ineffective ban on tartan. She married and became Mrs Grant of Laggan, Speyside. Anne was a poet. In 1795 she wrote The Highlanders. When this work was included in the collection Poems on Various Subjects, published in 1803, her notes to The Highlander included this statement: “[Tartan] was the manufacture of their women, and the distinction of their clans, each having had a sett (as they styled it) of tartan peculiarly their own.”

General David Stewart of Garth was the co-organiser, with Sir Walter Scott, of the 1822 Royal Visit. Garth had served in the Black Watch regiment since 1787. He was the author of Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland (1739). In his preface to that publication the General explains that he had been fortunate in having received much of the knowledge that he passes on from older men of the regiment, writing: “I had also the advantage of being acquainted with several highland gentlemen who had served as private soldiers in the regiment when first organized.”

Garth then has this to say about clan tartans: “In dyeing and arranging the various colours of their tartans, they displayed no small art and taste, preserving at the same time the distinctive patterns (or sets, as they were called) of the different clans, tribes, families, and districts. Thus a Macdonald, a Campbell, a Mackenzie. &c. was known by his plaid; and in like manner the Athole, Glen-orchy, and other colours of different districts were easily distinguishable.”

Garth adds an observation that though only a statement of common sense, is worth repeating in the context of this article: “It was easy to preserve and perpetuate any particular set, or pattern.”

Those who refuse to accept evidence of this quality must resort to effectively accusing Mrs Grant and General Stewart of having been misled or being in some other way channels of disinformation. Is their testimony to be overruled in favour of a modern prejudice?

At the risk of labouring the point, when William Wilson & Sons started to sell clan tartans to Scottish Highlanders there could have been absolutely no mystery as to whether this was an authentic tradition or a commercial novelty. If a person was too young to remember 1745 and what had gone before, he or she had only to ask a father, mother, uncle, aunt, or an elderly neighbour or friend. It seems unlikely that proud Highlanders would buy into something that they knew to be a racket.

As for the disappearance of all the old setts, no matter how often this has been copied from book to book, it was always too preposterous to require serious attention. Of course big manufacturers made the most of clan tartans, exploited them, if that term is preferred, but they did not dream the idea up out of thin air and gleefully bamboozle a generation of Highlanders.

With regard to provenance, each clan tartan has to be considered individually. Some have been passed down from Jacobite times, some are military in origin, some were designed or adopted in the early 19th century, and yet others are even more recent. There need not be any sense of the romantic and gullible versus the wise and realistic.

In truth, where the history of tartan is concerned, very few are wise. It is surely ironic that such a vibrantly colourful subject is comprised so frustratingly of grey areas. Anyone championing any point of view (including this one) has difficult questions to answer.

Allan Breck Stewart, of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, was surely a romantic character. Yet he was a real man and Stevenson’s novel was based very much on real events. These events took place during the period of Proscription. Regarding the sett, which we know as Stewart of Appin, James D Scarlett had this to say: “Without being foolishly definite, I would say that it would be probable that Allan Breck wore the Appin Stewart sett and would certainly regard it as authentic.”

[airmanisr]

Bristol 170 Freighters by Batman_60 Via Flickr: at Whenuapai, Walsh Brothers Memorial Air Pageant c 1953. "Creator New Zealand Herald Unknown Date October 1953 Please acknowledge 'Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1370-4-25 ' when re-using this image."

[genuine-history-blog]

Best World War II Non-fiction History Books

ABRAMSKY, C. (ed.), Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr ('The Initiation of the Negotiations Leading to the Nazi-Soviet Pact: A Historical Problem’, D. C. Watt) Macmillan, 1974

ABYZOV, VLADIMIR, The Final Assault, Novosti, Moscow, 1985

ALEXANDROV, VICTOR, The Kremlin, Nerve-Centre of Russian History, George Allen 8: Unwin, 1963

ALLILUYEVA, SVETLANA, Only One Year, Hutchinson, 1969

Twenty Letters to a Friend, Hutchinson, 1967

AMORT, R., and JEDLICKA, I. M., The Canan's File, Wingate, 1974

ANDERS, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL W., An Army in Exile, Macmillan, 1949

ANDREAS-FRIEDRICH, RUTH, Berlin Underground, 1939-1945, Latimer House, 1948

ANON, A Short History of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Sofia Press, Sofia, 1977

ANON, The Crime of Katyn, Facts and Documents, Polish Cultural Foundation, 1965

ANON, The Obersalzberg and the Third Reich, Plenk Verlag, Berchtesgaden, 1982

ANTONOV-OUSEYENKO, ANTON, The Time of Stalin, Portrait of a Tyranny, Harper & Row, New York, 1981

BACON, WALTER, Finland, Hale, 1970

BARBUSSE, HENRI, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man, Macmillan, New York, 1935

BAYNES, N. H. (ed), Hitler’s Speeches, 1922-39, 2 vols, OUP, 1942

BEAUFRE, ANDRE, 1940: The Fall of France, Cassell, 1968

BECK, JOSEF, Demier Rapport, La Baconniére, Brussels, 1951

BEDELL SMITH, WALTER, Moscow Mission 1946-1949, Heinemann, 1950

BELOFF, MAX, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, Vol Two, 1936-1941, Oxford, 1949

BEREZHKOV, VALENTIN, History in the Making, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1983

BIALER, S., Stalin and His Generals, Souvenir Press, 1969

BIELENBERG, CHRISTABEL, The Past is Myself, Chatto & Windus, 1968

BIRKENHEAD, LORD, Halifax, Hamish Hamilton, 1965

BOHLEN, CHARLES E., Witness to History, 1929-1969, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973

BONNET, GEORGES, Fin d’une Europe, Geneva, 1948

BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET, Shooting the Russian War, Simon 8: Schuster, New York, 1942

BOYD, CARL, Magic and the Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, Paper for Northern Great Plains History Conference, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 1986

BUBER, MARGARETE, Under Two Dictators, Gollancz, 1949

BUBER-NEUMANN, MARGARETE, Von Potsdam nach Moskau Stationens eines Irrweges, Hohenheim, Cologne, 1981

BULLOCK, ALAN, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Pelican, 1962

BURCKHARDT, CARL I., Meine Danziger Mission, 1937- 1939, Munich, 1960

BUTLERJ. R. M. (editor), Grand Strategy, Vols I-III, HMSO, 1956-1964

BUTSON, T. G., The Tsar’s Lieutenant: The Soviet Marshal, Praeger, 1984

CALDWELL, ERSKINE, All Out on the Road to Smolensk, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1942

CALIC, EDOUARD, Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, Chatto & Windus, 1971

CARELL, PAUL, Hitler’s War on Russia, Harrap, 1964

CASSIDY, HENRY C., Moscow Dateline, Houghton Mifilin, Boston, 1943

CECIL, ROBERT, Hitler’s Decision to Invade Russia, 1941, Davis-Poynter, 1975

CHANEY, OTTO PRESTON, JR., Zhukov, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1972

CHAPMAN, GUY, Why France Collapsed, Cassell, 1968

CHURCHILL, WINSTON S., The Second World War. Vol. I: The Gathering Storm, Vol. II: Their Finest Hour, Vol. III: The Grand Alliance, Penguin, 1985

CIENCIALA, ANNA M., Poland and the Western Powers, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968

CLARK, ALAN, Barbarossa, Hutchinson, 1965

COATES, W. P. and Z. K., The Soviet-Finnish Campaign, Eldon Press, 1942

COHEN, STEPHEN (ed.), An End to Silence (from Roy Medvedev’s underground magazine, Political Diary), W. W. Norton, New York, 1982

COLLIER, RICHARD, 1940 The World in Flames, Hamish Hamilton, 1979

COLVILLE, JOHN, The Fringes of Power, Downing Street Diaries, 1939-1955, Hodder & Stoughton, 1985

COLVIN, IAN, The Chamberlain Cabinet, Gollancz, 1971

CONQUEST, ROBERT, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan, 1968

COOKE, RONALD C., and NESBIT, ROY CONGERS, Target: Hitler’s Oil, Kitnber, 1985

COOPER, DIANA, Autobiography, Michael Russell, 1979

COULONDRE, ROBERT, De Staline a Hitler, Paris, 1950

CRUIKSHANK, CHARLES, Deception in World War II, CUP, 1979

DAHLERUS, BIRGER, The Last Attempt, Hutchinson, 1948

DALADIER, EDOUARD, The Defence of France, Hutchinson, 1939

DEAKIN, F. W., and STORRY, G. R., The Case of Richard Sarge, Chatto 8: Windus, 1966

DEIGHTON, LEN, Blitzkrieg, Jonathan Cape, 1979

DELBARS, YVES, The Real Stalin, George Allen 8: Unwin, 1953

DEUTSCHER, ISAAC, Stalin. A Political Biography, CUP, 1949

DIETRICH, OTTO, The Hitler I Knew, Methuen, 1957

DILKS, DAVID, (ed.), Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938-1945, Cassell, 1971

DJILAS, MILOVAN, Conversations with Stalin, Penguin, 1963

DOBSON, CHRISTOPHER and MILLER, JOHN, The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow: Allied War in Russia 1918-1920, Hodder & Stoughton, 1986

DOLLMANN, EUGEN, The Interpreter, Hutchinson, 1967

DONNELLY, DESMOND, Struggle for the World, Collins, 1965

DOUGLAS, CLARK, Three Days to Catastrophe, Hammond, 1966

DRAX, ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD PLUNKETT-ERNLE-ERLE-, Mission to Moscow, August 1939, Privately, 1966

DREA, EDWARD J., Nomohan: Japanese-Soviet Tactical Combat. 1939, Combat Studies Institute, Leavenworth Papers, January 1981

EDEN, ANTHONY, Facing the Dictators, Cassell, 1962

The Reckoning, Cassell, 1965

EDMONDS, H.J., Norman Dewhurst, MC, Privately, Brussels, 1968

EHRENBURG, ILYA, Eve of War, MacGibbon & Kee, 1963

EINZIG, PAUL, In the Centre of Things, Hutchinson, 1960

EISENSTEIN, SERGEI M., Immoral Memories, Peter Owen, 1985

ENGEL, GERHARD, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938-1943, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,

Stuttgart, 1974

ERICKSON,J., The Road to Stalingrad Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975

The Soviet High Command, Macmillan, 1962 ‘Reflections on Securing the Soviet Far Eastern Frontier: 1932-1945’, Interplay, August-September 1969

EUGLE, E., and PAANEN, L., The Winter War, Sidgwick 8: Jackson, 1973

FEILING, KEITH, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, Macmillan, 1946 FESTJOACHIM C., Hitler, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1974

The Face of the Third Reich, Weidenfeld 8c Nicolson, 1970

FISCHER, ERNST, An Opposing Man, Allen Lane, 1974

FLANNERY, HARRY W., Assignment to Berlin, Michael Joseph, 1942

FLEISHER, WILFRID, Volcano Isle, Jonathan Cape, 1942

FOOTE, ALEXANDER, Handbook for Spies, Museum Press, 1949, 1953

FRANCOIS-PONCET, ANDRE, The Fateful Years, Gollancz, 1949

FRANKEL, ANDREW, The Eagle’s Nest, Plenk Verlag, Berchtesgaden, 1983

GAFENCU, GRIGOIRE, The Last Days of Europe, Frederick Muller, 1947

GALANTE, PIERRE, Hitler Lives and the Generals Die, Sidgwick 8: Jackson, 1982

GARLINSKI, JOZEF, The Swiss Corridor, J. M. Dent, 1981

GIBSON, HUGH (ed.), The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1 943, Doubleday, New York, 1946

GILBERT, MARTIN, Finest Hour, Heinemann, 1983

The Holocaust, TheJewish Tragedy, Collins, 1986

Winston Churchill, The Wildemess Years, Macmillan, 1981

GISEVIUS, HANS BERND, To the Bitter End, Cape, 1948

GORALSKI, ROBERT, World War II Almanac, 1931-1945, Hamish Hamilton, 1981

GORBATOV, ALEKSANDR v., Years Of My Lips, Constable, 1964

GORODETSKY, G., Stahhrd Cripps’Mission to Moscow, 1940-42, Cambridge U.P., 1984

GREW, JOSEPH C., Ten Years in Japan, Hammond, Hammond, 1945

GREY, IAN, Stalin, Man of History, Weidenfeld 8c Nicolson, 1979

The First Fijiy Years. Soviet Russia, 1917-1967, Hodder 8c Stoughton, 1967

GRIGORENKO, PETRO G., Memoirs, Harvill, 1983 GRIPENBERG, G. A. (trs. Albin T. Anderson), Finland and the Great Powers, Univ. Of

Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1965

GUDERIAN, HEINZ, Panzer Leader, Ballantine Books, New York

GUN, NERIN E., Eva Braun, Hitler’s Mistress, Frewin, 1968

HALDER, COLONEL-GENERAL FRANZ, Kriegstagehuch, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1963 Hitler als Feldherr, Miinchener Dom-Verlag, Munich, 1949

HALIFAX, LORD, Fulness of Days, Collins, 1957

HARLEYJ. H. (based on Polish by Conrad Wrzos), TheAuthentic Biography of Colonel Beck, Hutchinson, 1939

HARRIMAN, W. A., and ABEL, 13., Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, Random House, New York, 1975

HASLAM,J., The Soviet Union and the Struggle/or Collective Security in Europe, 1933-1939, Macmillan, 1984

HAUNER, MILAN, Hitler. A Chronology of His Life and Time, Macmillan, 1983

HAYASHI, SABURO (with ALVIN D. coox), Kogun, The ]apanese Army in the Pacific War, Marine Corps Association, Quantico, Va., 1959

HEIBER, HELMUT, Goebbels, Robert Hale, 1972

HENDERSON, SIR NEVILE, Failure of a Mission, Hodder & Stoughton, 1940

HERWARTH, HANS VON (with FREDERICH STARR), Against Two Evils, Collins, 1981

HESSE, FRITZ, Das Spiel um Deutschland, List, Munich, 1953 Hitler and the English, Wingate, 1954

HESTON, LEONARD and RENATO, The Medical Case Boole of Adolf Hitler, Kimber, 1979

HILGER, GUSTAV (with ALFRED G. MEYER), The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918-1941 Macmillan, New York, 1953

HILL, LEONIDAS E. (ed.) Die Weizsacleer Papiere, 1933-1950, Berlin, 1974

HINSLEY, F. H. with THOMAS, E. E., RANSOM, C. F. G., and KNIGHT, R. (3., British Intelligence in the Second World War, Vol. 1, HMSO, 1979

HITLER, ADOLF, Mein Kampf, Hutchinson, 1969 Hitler’s Secret Conversations, Signet, New York, 1961 The Testament of Adolf Hitler. The Hitler-Borrnann Documents, Cassell, 1961

HOFFMANN, HEINRICH, Hitler Was My Friend, Burke, 1955

HOFFMANN, PETER, Hitler’s Personal Security, MIT, Boston, 1979

HOHNE, HEINZ (trs. R. Barry), The Order of the Death ’5 Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS, Seeker & Warburg, 1969 HOSKING, G., A History of the Soviet Union, Fontana, 1985 HYDE, H. MONTGOMERY, Stalin, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971 INFIELD, GLENN B., Hitler’s Secret Life, Hamlyn, 1980 IRVING, DAVID, Hitler’s War, 1939-1942, Macmillan, 1983 The War Path, Michael Joseph, 1978

ISRAELYAN, V. L., The Diplomatic History of the Great Fatherland War, Moscow, 1959

JAKOBSON, MAX, The Diplomacy of the Winter War, Harvard UP, Boston, 1961

JEDRZEJEWICZ, WACLAW (ed.), Diplomat in Paris: 1931-1939 -Papers 65 Memoirs of ]uliusz Lukasiewicz, Columbia UP, New York, 1970

JONES, F. C., Japan’s New Order in East Asia. Its Rise and Fall, 0UP, 1954 Manchuria Since 1931, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1949

JONES, R. V., Most Secret War, Hamish Hamilton, 1978

JONGE, ALEX DE, Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union, Collins, 1986 The Weimar Chronicle. Prelude to Hitler, Paddington Press, 1978

KAZAKOV, GENERAL M. I., Nad Kartoi Bylykh Srazhenii, Voenizdat, Moscow, 1965

KEITEL, WILHELM, Memoirs, Kimber, 1965

KENNAN, GEORGE E, Soviet Foreign Policy 1917-1941, Robert E. Krieger, Princeton, 1960

KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA S., (Trs. and edited by Strobe Talbott), Khrushchev Remembers, André Deutsch, 1971

KIRBY, D. G., Finland in the Twentieth Century, C. Hurst 8t Co., 1979

KIRKPATRICK, LYMAN B. JR, Captains Without Eyes. Intelligence Failures in World War II, Macmillan, New York

KLEIST, PETER, European Tragedy, Times Press/Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, Isle of Man, 1965

KORDT, ERICH, Nicht aus den Akten: Die Wilhelrnstrasse in Frieden und Krieg, Stuttgart, 1950

KRAVCHENKO, VICTOR, I Chose Freedom, Robert Hale, 1947

KROSBY, HANS PETER, Finland, Germany and the Soviet Union, 1940-41: The Petsamo Dispute, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 1968

KRYLOV, IVAN, Soviet Staff Officer, Falcon Press, 1951

KUBIZEK, AUGUST, The Young Hitler I Knew, Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1955

KUSNIERZ, B. N., Stalin and the Poles, Hollis & Carter, 1949

KUUSINEN, AINO, Before and After Stalin, Michael Joseph, 1974

KUZNETSOV, N. G., ‘In Charge of the Navy’ (from Stalin and His Generals, ed. Seweryn Bialer), Souvenir Press, 1969

LEACH, BARRY A., German Strategy Against Russia, 1939 - 1941, OUP, 1973

LEHMAN, JEAN-PIERRE, The Roots of Modern Japan, Macmillan, 1982

LENSEN, GEORGE ALEXANDER, The Strange Neutrality. Soviet-Japanese Relations During the Second World War 1941-1945, Diplomatic Press, Tallahassee, Fla., 1972

LEONHARD, WOLFGANG, Child of the Revolution, Collins, 1957

LEWIN, RONALD, Hitler’s Mistakes, Leo Cooper, 1984 Ultra Goes to War, Hutchinson, 1978

LITVINOV, MAXIM, Notes for a Journal, André Deutsch, 1955

LITYNSKI, ZYGMUNT, I Was One of Them, Cape, 1941

LOSSBERG, BERNHARD VON, Im Wehnnachtfuhrungsstab, Nolke, Hamburg, 1947

LUKACS JOHN, The Last European War, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977

LYONS, GRAHAM (ed.), The Russian Version of the Second World War, Leo Cooper, 1976

MACKENZIE, A., The History of Transylvania, Unified Printers 8: Publishers, 1983

MACKIEWICZ, STANISLAW, Colonel Beck and His Polity, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1944

MACKINTOSH, M., Juggernaut. A History of the Soviet Armed Forces, Seeker 8t Warburg, 1967

MACLEAN, FlTZROY, Eastern Approaches, Cape, 1949

MACLEOD, COLONEL R., and KELLY, DENIS (eds.), The Ironside Diaries, 1937-1940, Constable, 1962

MAISKY, IVAN, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, Hutchinson, 1967 Who Helped Hitler?, Hutchinson, 1964

MANCHESTER, WILLIAM, The Arms of Krupp, Michael Joseph, 1969

MANVELL, ROGER, and FRAENKEL, HEINRICH, Hitler, the Man and the Myth, Granada, 1978

MEDVEDEV, ROY, All Stalin 3 Men, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983 Let History Judge, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1971 Khrushchev, Blackwell, Oxford, 1982 On Stalin and Stalinism, CUP, 1979

MERSON, ALLAN, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany, Lawrence & Wishart, 1985

MORAVEC, FRANTISEK, Master of Spies, Bodley Head, 1975

MORLEY, JAMES W. (ed.), The Fateful Choice: Japan ’s Road to the Pacific War, Columbia UP, New York, 1980

MOSLEY, LEONARD, On Borrowed Time, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969

NEKRICH, A. M., 1941, 22 Iyunia, Nauka, Moscow, 1965

NOLLAU, GUNTHER, International Communism and World Revolution, Hollis & Carter, 1961

NOWAK, JAN, Courier from Warsaw, Collins/Hamill, 1982

OTETEA, ANDREI, The History of the Romanian People, Scientific Publishing House, Bucharest, 1970

OVSYANY, IGOR, The Origins of Word War Two, Novosti, Moscow, 1984

PAASIKIVI, JUHO KUSTI, Am Rande einer Supermacht, Behauptung durch Diplomatie, Hosten Verlag, Hamburg, 1966

PARKINSON, ROGER, Peace for Our Time, Hart-Davis, 1971

PAYNE, ROBERT, The Rise and Fall of Stalin, W. H. Allen, 1966

PETROV, VLADIMIR, June 22, 1941. Soviet Historians and the German Invasion, Univ. of S. Carolina, 1968

RACZYNSKI, COUNT EDWARD, In Allied London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962

RADO, SANDOR, Sous le Pseudonym Dora (Dora Jelenti), Julliard, Paris, 1972

RAEDER, ERICH, My Life, US Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1960

READ, ANTHONY, and FISHER, DAVID, Colonel Z, Hodder & Stoughton, 1984 Operation Lucy, Hodder & Stoughton, 1980

REISCHAUER, EDWIN O., The Japanese, Harvard UP, 1977

REITLINGER, GERALD, The House Built on Sand, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960

RIBBENTROP, JOACHIM VON, Zwischen London und Moskau: Erinnerungen und letzte Aufzeichnungen, Stuttgart, 1955

RICH, NORMAN, Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State and the Course of Expansion, Norton, New York, 1973 Hitler’s War Aims: The Establishment of the New Order, Norton, New York, 1974

RINGS, WERNER, Life with the Enemy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982

ROKOSSOVSKY, K., A Soldier’s Duty, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970

ROOS, H., A History of Modern Poland, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962

ROSSI, A., The Russo-German Alliance, Chapman 8: Hall, 1950

ROTHSTEIN, ANDREW, and DUTT, CLEMENS (eds.), History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow

RUBINSTEIN, ALVIN Z. (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union. The Search for Security 1934-41, New York, undated

RUSSELL, WILLIAM, Berlin Embassy, Michael Joseph, 1942

RYABOV, VASILI, The Great Victory, Novosti, Moscow, 1985

SALISBURY, HARRISON E., A journey for Our Times, Harper 81. Row, New York, 1983 The Siege of Leningrad, Seeker & Warburg, 1969

SCHAPIRO, LEONARD, The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union, Vintage Books, 1978

SCHMIDT, PAUL, Hitler’s Interpreter, Heinemann, 1951 SCHRAMM, PERCY ERNST, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, Allen Lane, 1972 SCHREIBER, H., Teuton and Slav, 1965

SCHWARZ, PAUL, This Man Ribhentrop, julian Messner, New York, 1943

SCOTT, JOHN, Duel for Europe, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1942

SEATON, ALBERT, The Russo-German War 1941-45, Arthur Barker, 1971 Stalin as Warlord, Batsford, 1976

SEVOSTYANOV, PAVEL, Before the Nazi Invasion, Progress, Moscow, 1984

SEYMOUR, CHARLES (ed.), The Intimate Paper of Colonel House, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1926

SHACHTMAN, TOM, The Phony War 1939-1940, Harper & Row, New York, 1982

SHIRER, WILLIAM, Berlin Diary, Bonanza Books, New York, 1984 The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940, Little, Brown, ‘Boston, 1984 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Secker & Warburg, 1960 The Collapse of the Third Republic, Literary Guild, 1966

SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI, Testimony, Hamish Hamilton, 1979

SIPOLS, V. J., Secret Diplomacy. Bourgeois Latvia in the Anti-Soviet Plans of the Imperialist Powers, 1919-1940, Riga The Road to Victory, Progress, Moscow, 1985

SMITH, HOWARD K., Last Train from Berlin, Cresset Press, 1942

SOMMER, ERICH F., Das Memorandum, Herbig, Munich, 1981

SOUVARINE, BORIS, Stalin-A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, Longmans, Green, New York, 1939

SPEER, ALBERT, Inside the Third Reich, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970

STALIN, J. V., The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, International Publishers, New York, 1948

STERN, J. P., Hitler. The Fuhrer and the People, Fontana, 1975

STONE, NORMAN, Hitler, Hodder & Stoughton, 1980

STORRY, RICHARD, A History of Modern Japan, Penguin Books, 1960 Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia 1894-1943, Macmillan, 1979

STRANG, LORD, The Moscow Negotiations 1939, Leeds UP, 1968 Home and Abroad, André Deutsch, 1956

STYPULKOWSKI, Z., Invitation to Moscow, Thames & Hudson, 1951

SUKHANOV, N. N., The Russian Revolution, 1917, CUP, 1955

SUVOROV, VIKTOR, Soviet Military Intelligence, Hamish Hamilton, 1984

SYROP, KONRAD, Poland in Perspective, Robert Hale, 1982

SZEMBEK, JAN, Journal, 1933-1939, Léon Noel, Paris, 1952

TANNER, V., The Winter War, Stanford UP, 1957

TARULIS, ALBERT N., Soviet Policy Toward the Baltic States, 1918-1944, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1959

TAYLOR, A.J. P., The Origins of the Second World War, Penguin, 1961 The Second World War, Hamish Hamilton, 1975

TAYLOR, FRED (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries 1939-41, Hamish Hamilton, 1982

THAYER, CHARLES, Diplomat, Harper, New York, 1959

THOMI, ABRAHAM, The Dream and the Awakening, Gareth Powell Associates, Sydney, 1977

TOKAEV, G., Comrade X, Harris Press, 1956

TOLAND, JOHN, Adolf Hitler, Doubleday, New York, 1976

The Rising Sun. The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, Cassell, 1970

TROTSKY, LEON, My Life, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1960

Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence, Harper, New York, 1941

TUOMINEN, ARVO, The Bells of the Kremlin, Univ. Press of New England, 1983

ULAM, ADAM B., Expansion and Coexistence. Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-73, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1974

Stalin, the Man and his Era, Allen Lane, 1974

UPTON, A. F., Finland 1939-40, Davis-Poynter, 1974

Finland in Crisis, 1940-1941, Faber & Faber, 1964

The Communist Parties of Scandinavia and Finland, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973

URBAN, GARRI S., Tovarisch, I am not Dead, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980

VANSITTART, LORD, The Mist Procession, Hutchinson, 1958

VARDYS, V. STANLEY (ed.), Lithuania Under the Soviets 1940-1965: Aggression Soviet Style 1939-1940, Frederick Praeger, New York, 1965

VIGOR, P. H., Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory, Macmillan, 1983

VOLKOV, FYDOR, Secrets from Whitehall and Downing Street, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1980

VORMANN, NIKOLAUS VON, Der Feldzug in Polen, I93 9, Weissenburg, 1958

VORONOV, N. N., Na Sluzhbe Voennoi, Moscow, 1963

WALLER, BRUCE, Bismarck at the Crossroads, Athlone Press, 1974

WARLIMONT, WALTER, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939-45, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964

WATT, DONALD CAMERON, Too Serious a Business, Temple Smith, 1975

WATTS, RICHARD M., Bitter Glory: Poland and its Fate, 1918 to I 939, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1979

WEINBERG, GERHARD L., World in the Balance, Univ. of New England, 1981

WEIzsACKER, ERNST VON, Memoirs, Gollancz, 1951

WELAND, JAMES EDWIN, Thejapanese Army in Manchuria, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1977

WELLES, SUMNER, A Time for Decision, Harper, New York, 1944

WERTH, ALEXANDER, Russia at War, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1964

WHALEY, BARTON, Codeword Barbarossa, MIT, Boston, 1974

WHEATLEY, RONALD, Operation Sea Lion, CUP, 1958

WHEELER-BENNETT, JOHN W., The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1914 - 1945, Macmillan, 1953

WISKEMANN, ELIZABETH, Europe of the Dictators 1919-1945, Fontana, 1966

WOODWARD, LLEWELLYN, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, HMSO, 1962

WUORINEN, JOHN H, A History of Finland, Columbia, New York, 1965

YAKOVLEV, A., Purpose of My Life. Notes of an Aircraft Designer. Progress, Moscow, 1974

YEREMENKO, MARSHAL G. K., Vospominaniya i Razmyshleniya, Novosti, Moscow, 1970

YOUNG, KATSU, Thejapanese Army and the Soviet Union 1 93 9-1 941 , Univ. of Washington, 1958

ZARIK, 0., German Odyssey, London, 1941

ZHUKOV, GEORGI I., Memoirs, Cape, 1970 . ZOLLER, ALBERT, Douze ans auprés d’Hz‘tler (Memoirs of Christa Schrc'idcr), Julhard, Paris, 1949 .

ZUKER-BUJANOWSKA, LILIANA, Liliana ’s Journal, Warsaw 1939-1945, Piatkus, 1981

[my-time-in-space]

Ref: 35-R130, Albert Park with band rotunda, 1910-1919, Sir George Grey Special Collections

[rmh6427]

Here is an image showing a view of Albert Park Retrieved from: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W667. 

This shows a very early view of my site and possible even the young tree that I have chosen. (indicated by a very faint arrow). This shows how apart from the growth of trees and other fauna, Albert park has not changed dramatically since this picture. 

[thepastsituation]

View of the Harbour Board building on corner of Little Queen Street and Quay Street West. Henry Winkelmann, Auckland, January 1927.

[carlamiller-final-project]

History of the whaf

Looking north west along Queen Street showing the Ligar Canal and Greyhound Inn (right) Auckland Region (N.Z.) 1857  Existing Shoreline and proposed urbanization

A photographic copy of Felton Mathew's original plan of Auckland. 1841

Fort lane zoomed in

Commercial Bay, Fort Street, Point Britomart, St Pauls Church, Shortland Street, 1843. Image credit: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-1047

Looking north west along Queen Street showing the Ligar Canal and Greyhound Inn (right) Auckland Region (N.Z.) 1857

For my historic research of fort lane I was interesting in the shoreline of the waitemata river that once was there. 

[scarwasright]

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) Special Edition guidebook transcript, including Ed’s decoded notes

What it says on the label. The Blu-Ray special edition of FMA 03 came with a ton of cool shit, including a hardcover artbook with the character profiles originally from the DVD booklets as well as some other, “handwritten” notes from Edward. Since I know not a lot of fans got their hands on this set, I promised a WHILE ago that I would transcribe it! Someday I’ll have scans, but I don’t have access to a scanner atm.

I’ll be listing the character notes by 3 categories: Profile Text, Edward’s Notes, and Edward’s Coded Notes.

Profile Text- the brief character blurbs that were already published in the DVD guidebooks that came out in Funimation’s original localization. Most recurring characters got one.

Edward’s Notes- The book’s title page indicates that it was issued by the Amestrian State Military, and that it belongs to Ed. Little handwritten notes, presumably from Ed, are scattered throughout the character profiles. Some are silly, some are... very not silly.

Edward’s Coded Notes- Some of Ed’s notes are written in a very simple code that replaces the English characters with symbols. It’s straightforward enough that I was able to break it in about an hour - I posted a key over here.

Not included in this text are the image captions associated with the characters’ model drawings, since they don’t make any sense without context. Stuff like “Al age 7, Ed age 8.” There are also many artist notes in Japanese, and I am anything but a Japanese speaker, so no luck there.

Fair warning, there are Royed, Royai, and if you squint, Edvy jokes in the coded text. I’m just writing what’s in the book.

Full transcript behind the cut!

THE TITLE PAGE indicates that the book is military-issued, and Edward has signed his full name on it. The following page is printed with a torn page from a smaller, obviously older book. In ornate letters, it reads the verse that was written in part in the Transmutation Circle the boys tried to use to bring back Trisha:

Pale and black with false citrine, imperfect white and red, The Peacock's feathers in gay colours, the rainbow which shall go over, The spotted panther, the lion green, the Crows bill blue as lead. These shall appear before you perfect white, and many more others. And after the perfect white, grey, false citrine also, And after these, there shall appear the red body invariable, Then you have a medicine of the third order of his own kind multipliable. 

Edward’s Coded Notes: Written into the margins of the “original” military book, “Sir George Ripley,” with an arrow pointing to the pressed page. Along the side margin, he’s written “thhe* recapitulation of thhe* twelve gates.”

Explanation: Sir George Ripley is a famous British alchemist whose verse appears on this page. The full transcript of the poem Edward pasted in his book can be found here! It is also, notably, the incantation recited by Eckhart in Conqueror of Shamballa when she sought to open the Gate using Envy.

       *Two people seem to have worked on the coded notes, one on the title and transmutation circle pages and the other on the character pages. The handwriting is a bit different, and the title+circle pages are noticeably sloppier than the character pages as far as adhering to the cipher goes. The symbol used for TH in the character pages is used only for a T which is followed by an H on the title pages. In the character pages the standalone H character is absent when the TH character is used, so the inconsistency makes for an obviously unintentional duplicate on the title page.

Edward’s Notes: There are twelve tally marks in the margin of this page, as well as some scribbled equations that are difficult to make out. Ed has awful handwriting.

EDWARD ELRIC

Profile Text: Edward Elric is the Fullmetal Alchemist. He is a prodigy, becoming the youngest State Alchemist in the Army’s history. Edward stunned his superiors by using alchemy without an array, a miraculous feat never witnessed before. Ed despises being a “dog of the military,” but it grants him the opportunity to seek out the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, a crimson crystal rumored to increase the power of the alchemist who uses it.

Edward seeks the stone so that he may restore his missing limbs, and more importantly reunite his younger brother Alphonse’s body with his soul, which was tragically trapped in a suit of armor after a failed attempt through alchemy to revive the dead Trisha Elric, the boys’ mother. Edward realizes he has a gift, a gift that most State Alchemists could only dream of having. But he knows that with that gift he becomes a high profile target.

As Edward reluctantly fights off a crazed assassin who vows revenge on all State Alchemists, Edward begins to unravel the clues that reveal not all is as it seems at the highest levels of the State Military. And, that there is a terrible secret behind the precious Philosopher’s Stone.

ALPHONSE ELRIC

Profile Text: Alphonse Elric was but an innocent young child when a tragic chain of events changed his life forever. First, his father mysteriously vanished while Al was too young to remember. Then, after battling terrible illness, Al’s mother succumbed to death. Finally, during a horrific accident performing forbidden alchemy, Al’s soul was sealed inside a suit of armor.

Undaunted and unashamed by all that has happened in his short life, Al carries on, eternally supporting his older brother, Edward, in his search for the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary gem with the power to restore Al’s body and Edward’s lost limbs. Al knows that he and his brother’s actions were wrong. He only wishes for a chance to make things right.

Edward’s Notes: In smudged, barely-legible pencil, “Brother, don’t sell me short!” (thank u @gryphcat cross-referencing your own book to confirm that it does NOT say “Brother, don’t call me short!”)

Also notable is the circled “???” with an arrow pointing to that adorable picture of young Al enthusiastically ripping off his shirt.

Edward’s Coded Notes: FYI, there isn’t anything under the loincloth, [indecipherable*]!

       *I think the letters were flubbed a bit, here. The characters read “[y/i]n[u/v][f/p]er[u/v]s.” I get the feeling it was supposed to say “Impervious!” buuuut someone messed up.

HOHENHEIM ELRIC

Profile Text: Supposedly lost to the ages, Hohenheim Elric, the father of the brothers Elric was close at hand after all, lurking in the shadows of history as the momentum of the search for the Philosopher’s Stone reached fever pitch. Hohenheim reappears in Resembool allowing the final pieces of this mad puzzle to begin falling into place, as he bears the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone in his weary heart... A heart beaten down by lost love, a heart full of loyalty to his boys*. Destiny has delivered Hohenheim to a crucial point, a spot in time when all that is good prepares to unravel. Perhaps he will be strong enough to move forward and rise above his shady pas, nad push his shoulder against the wheel of fate that threatens to crush all he ever cared for.

       *We watched two very different series, apparently

Edward’s Coded Notes: That bastard [arrow pointing to his portrait]

TRISHA ELRIC (who shares a page with Hohenheim)

Edward’s Coded Notes: Why did they both have to die?

ROY MUSTANG

Profile Text: Roy Mustang is the Flame Alchemist and a veteran of many brutal battles. He personally knew Edward and Alphonse’s father, which sparked his curiosity once he discovered that Hohenheim’s sons were dabbling in alchemical arts. Mustang is eager to climb the ladder of success and hopes that discovering the immense talent within Edward helps him ascend the ranks. Still, Mustang’s soldiers are the most loyal in all of the State Army, insinuating that there is more to this man than his thirst for power.

Edward’s Coded Notes: Roy Mustang is dead sexy in a miniskirt!* [T]ake that [y]ou smug [b]astard!** Why does he have to be so attractive

       *Most likely a reference to an old convention gag. Back when FMA was big enough that it had dedicated cast panels, fans would almost always ask Vic Mignogna to say this line.

       **The bracketed letters are cut off, but it’s fairly easy to assume what they are given the context.

RIZA HAWKEYE

Profile Text: Riza Hawkeye is quite possibly the most perfect model of a soldier in the State Army. Although Hawkeye is Roy Mustang’s subordinate, she is also his right hand woman, acting as an advisor and, based on the circumstance, devil’s advocate. Her no-nonsense attitude demands respect from everyone she meets, military and civilian alike. She is cool, calm, and collected, and exceptionally skilled in the use of firearms.

Edward’s Coded Notes: [bridging the gap between Roy and Riza’s facing pages, underlined with an arrow] Just get married already!

MAES HUGHES

Profile Text: Maes Hughes is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Investigations Division of the State Army. Hughes is obsessively in love with his wife Gracia, and only child Elicia, who from birth shares a strange connection with Ed and Al. Hughes is friendly and extremely casual, sometimes to a fault. He can quickly lapse back and forth between discussing State matters and going on and on about his family. As a high-ranking official in the Investigations Division, Hughes is privy to plenty of top-secret info, which he shares with Ed on the sly. When Hughes is nudged into physical combat, his weapons of choice are small throwing knives, which he wields with incredible and deadly accuracy.

Edward’s Notes: [slightly obscured by water damage] I’m sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen

ALEX LOUIS ARMSTRONG

Profile Text: Major Alex Louis Armstrong was given strict orders from Mustang to protect Ed. But, don’t let his civilian clothes fool you. With his strapping build and gutsy bravado, this Strong Arm Alchemist will give his life to ensure he completes his mission successfully. If on thing’s for certain, Armstrong will make sure that Ed’s within arm’s protection.

This straight and narrow man won’t even give Ed as much as a loss in an argument. He’d rather use his genteel decorum to kill improper manners with his heroic kindness. Even during their down time in Resembool, there’s not a moment to lose. Armstrong is committed to his life as a soldier, and knows daily training is essential - even if that means cutting firewood with his bare hands.

Edward’s Notes: [circled] Why are there so many sparkles?!!

JEAN HAVOC, HEYMANS BREDA, VATO FALMAN, KAIN FUERY

Profile Text: In a world where loyalties change with the tides, good subordinates are a premium. Roy Mustang has this luxury with Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery. These four loyal officers will do anything their commander requests of them and do it well, to boot. However, these four couldn’t be more different. Havoc is the tragic playboy of the group, always wishing he had that special someone to share the rest of his days. Breda may be called a “dog of the military” from time to time, but Breda would rather stare down an entire army than get anywhere near a real dog. Falman is overly formal, causing some of his comrades to wish he would lighten up. Fuery is the soft-spoken technical wizard under Mustang’s command. He isn’t used to much hand-to-hand combat, but is handy enough in a pinch. As with all of Mustang’s men, these four would follow him until death.

DENNY BLOCH AND MARIA ROSS

Profile Text: Abrasive in demeanor, Lieutenant Maria Ross is always determined to do the right thing. Sometimes, she has trouble distinguishing between her actual duties and the chance to deliver a lecture. Sergeant Denny Bloch, along with Lieutenant Ross, was given the responsibility to keep the Fullmetal Alchemist under close supervision. Regardless, they fall behind when danger approaches.

Edward’s Coded Notes: Watch out for her slap!

IZUMI CURTIS

Profile Text: The stern Izumi Curtis is more than just an alchemy teacher to the Elric brothers. As the passionate matriarch of a two-person family, Ed and Al may be the closest thing she’ll ever have to children. Resurfacing after hearing rumors about her former pupils, it is quite possible Izumi may know more than she lets on about the true nature of alchemy and the sinister homunculi.

Edward’s Coded Notes: [circled] She always looks like a pissed off housewife!

SCIESZKA

Profile Text: Scieszka is the prototypical, scatterbrained librarian. With her impeccable retention of facts, the clues that others miss quickly slide into place for this unlikely hero. Hopefully, her pleas for justice will not fall on deaf ears.

Edward’s Notes: [circled, pointing to Scieszka’s distressed portrait] Did they run out of books?

ROSE

Profile Text: The once vibrant Rose has wilted due to a hard life of tragedy and turmoil. After suffering the harshest of injustices at the hands of the State Military, Rose finds herself a mute and a mother... The mother of an infant, and the mother of a movement. Now the spiritual leader of the Liore revolutionaries and advised by the ever-present Lyra, Rose must struggle to lead her people to peace. With her beloved Liore in the crosshairs, she can only hope to find her voice in time to half the demise of everything she cared for.

Edward’s Notes: “You’ve got a good, strong pair of legs, Rose. You should get up and use them.”

RUSSEL & FLETCHER TRINGHAM

Edward’s Notes: Ed himself has drawn in the boys’ transmutation circle for plants, and has labeled it as such. He has also sketched one of their flasks and written next to it “For red water?”

Edward’s Coded Notes: Why is he so tall?!!

#48 & #66

Edward’s Notes: He has drawn the Slicer Brothers’ blood seals and labeled them. The secret behind Lab 5... ???

Edward’s Coded Notes: Prisoners!

FRANK ARCHER

Profile Text: His heart as cold as his flesh is pale, Frank Archer is willing to embrace corruption for a cause... especially if the cause is blatant self-promotion. Looking to bolster his reputation by crushing a revolt in Liore, Archer sets fate in motion with little regard for anything other than pleasing himself and the Fuhrer. His lust for war and his hunt for the infamous Scar may cloud his vision, however, as he potentially confuses sacrifice for suicide.

Edward’s Coded Notes: You [m]ight want [s]ome [s]unscreen* [indicating the image of his mech form] The Terminator?

ZOLF J KIMBLEY

Edward’s Coded Notes: Mullet?!

SHOU TUCKER

Profile Text: Shou Tucker earned the title Sewing Life Alchemist thanks in large part to his masterful work creating Chimeras for the State. In fact, Tucker was the first alchemist to produce a Chimera capable of speaking and understanding the human language. Tucker is a man with incredible brilliance and immense talent. The irony is that he can create life, but that his own is being controlled is not lost upon Shou Tucker. With his execution staged by the Military, Tucker has spent all of his time devoted to research and experimentation, with one purpose in mind: bring back the daughter he once readily destroyed.

Edward’s Notes: Because we’re not Gods, we’re humans, tiny insignificant humans. Who couldn’t even save a little girl...

Edward’s Coded Notes: I’ll never forgive that bastard.

SCAR

Profile Text: Like Ed, Scar is able to use alchemy without a transmutation circle. Scar both hates and embraces his “curse.” He has a special grudge against State Alchemists because of past atrocities towards his homeland of Ishbal. The Ishbal Massacre was a vicious military offensive against Ishbal due to conflicting doctrines because the citizens would not put aside their traditional beliefs and embrace alchemy. Scar believes his god has instilled in him the right to kill State Alchemists at will for what they have done to his people. He truly believes his cause is righteous, no matter what it takes. 

Edward’s Coded Notes: [indicating Scar’s hair] Frosted tips are over, dude... Those glasses are so dated...

LUST

Profile Text: The beautiful homunculus Lust desires to become human through the massive power of the Philosopher’s Stone. She dreams of finally finding out who she really is inside, and to discover what will happen to her after death. These are all very human traits for a being that supposedly has no soul. Lust uses any means necessary to traverse the dilemmas of her existential crisis... She is able to corrupt the minds of the weak, forcing them to follow her every whim. Like Scar and Ed, the gorgeous and sad Lust is traveling down the same whirlpool of misery and darkness that sucks away all who quest for the Philosopher’s Stone.

Edward’s Notes: [smudged, almost beyond legibility] I just hope Havoc doesn’t meet her... Edward has drawn an arrow from Lust’s locket to Scar with ???, as well as a two-way arrow between the facing pages with the writing What’s their connection?

Edward’s Coded Notes: Maybe she and Roy* should go on a date with Roy* - I heard she’s a real screamer**

       *Another seeming typo.

       **Probably a reference to Laura Bailey’s marriage to Travis Willingham, as they play Lust and Roy in the English dub. Roy is responsible for Lust’s death in the manga and second anime, and she does not go quietly.

GLUTTONY

Profile Text: Loyal homunculus companion to Lust, Gluttony, eater of anything, might be the saddest example of the cruel nature of the hunt for the Philosopher’s Stone. Simple and savage, Gluttony operates at once like a child and an animal, a creature of pure instant satisfaction. He simply knows one thing: Hunger. Not for power of prestige, but only to satisfy his reason to be... this only adds to the wretchedness of his tragic existence.

Edward’s Notes: I-DCCC-DCCI-VM?*

       *I have absolutely no idea what this is in reference to, so if anyone knows, I would LOVE an answer.

ENVY

Profile Text: Envy is one of the homunculi, a group of pseudo-humans whose creation is still an enigma. Some say they were created in a lab. Others believe they’ve always been among us. But no matter where they came from, their intention are nothing but evil. Envy has the ability to become a perfect physical replica of whomever he or she desires. Envy is without gender. In fact, Envy’s mind is so far gone that he or she can’t remember who he or she used to be. Envy’s power is truly amazing.

The shape-shifting homunculi Envy could be anyone, utilizing the ability to take on the physical appearance of any being at will. Envy will morph into a stranger behind you in a smokey cafe, or the trusted ally that works with you to uncover corruption and twisted abuses of power, or even your loving spouse. And beneath the familiar surface pure evil waits. Never turn your back on Envy. Even after you’ve slit the creature’s throat.

Edward’s Notes: Areca triandea Phoenix canariensis, Ceros nucifera Sabal minor Syogrus romanzoffiana* [next to this, Edward drew a little palm tree with a ?]

       *the binomial nomenclature for a queen palm tree

Edward’s Coded Notes: I’m not into palm trees

GREED

Profile Text: A thick-skinned enigma even among the mysterious homunculi, Greed wants it all... money, power, women, and the greatest prize of all: eternal life. Greed leads a band of outlaw chimeras and instructs his freakish minions to kidnap Alphonse Elric, believing the young alchemist is the key to the door of immortality. Headed for a brutal showdown, Ed will test the homunculus’ reputation as the Ultimate Shield. In return, Greed will test every notion Ed ever held to be true and real.

Edward’s Notes: [smudged] I wonder why Dante made him...

SLOTH

Profile Text: Draped in the appearance of the late Trisha Elric*, the water abomination Sloth was created on that fateful night of lost innocence; the night when the Elric brothers first set out in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. After being nursed and groomed by Dante and Pride, and her involvement in the slaughter of Maes Hughes, she is forced to confront Ed and Al. While cursing them for her fate, Sloth’s seemingly maternal memories and longings may provide the homunculus with her downfall... nothing in the universe is more resilient than a mother’s love. Something stirs in Sloth, where a soul once rested.

Edward’s Notes: [a two-way arrow, pointing from Sloth’s name to hand-written Juliet Douglas] [*above this line in her bio, Ed has aggressively written NO!]

Edward’s Coded Notes: [circled, with an arrow indicating the bio] She is not my mother!!!

WRATH

Profile Text: The homunculus Wrath might be the most mysterious of all the dark creatures. A volatile combination of childlike mischief and soulless evil, Wrath was discovered on a treacherous island by the Elrics and their teacher Izumi. Timid at first, Wrath’s demeanor soon shifts as layer upon layer of intrigue is peeled away, uncovering a core of supernatural madness. Able to perform alchemy, at times even in ways that Fullmetal himself doesn’t understand, it becomes clear that Wrath is a monster. His connection to Ed and Al’s teacher could provide answers to questions that are too shocking to ask.* Suspicious of the boy, Ed will give an arm and a leg to uncover the truth about the wild child.

Edward’s Coded Notes: [with an arrow pointing from the bio text Ed has underlined] It’s hers!

KING BRADLEY (PRIDE)

Profile Text: The Fuhrer King Bradley commands both the State Government and the State Army making him seemingly the most powerful man in the entire world. Known as one of the most cunning and vicious warriors in history, the homunculus Pride, the Fuhrer himself, has orchestrated countless bloody conflicts in his search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Calm, cool, collected and created by Dante... Bradley moves his pieces into striking range. Is it possible, though, that the Ultimate Eye is blind to his own role as a pawn in someone else’s sinister plot?

Edward’s Notes: He’s a homunculus that can age?!!

Edward’s Coded Notes: How did no one figure it out?!!

DANTE

Profile Text: Dante’s actions, her attempts to control the uncontrollable and manipulate innocence, have carried her through the centuries with a singular goal... immortality. At times seemingly aligned with the powers of good, while dipping her toes into the red pool of evil, Dante’s path has been one clouded by murky intentions. At the end of the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, as all of the players look up past the strings that carried them through this desperate dance, whose face will they see?

Edward’s Notes: an arrow connects Dante’s name with Lyra, which is circled

Edward’s Coded Notes: So glad she isn’t my mom!

After the character pages, there are four pages of alchemic arrays. The writing here gets really vague, as all of it is written in Ed’s code and there are many mistakes.

The Thule Society’s array has a four letter word with an exclamation point that begins with NA, followed by the character for X and a sloppy character that is probably I/Y but looks more like a J. There are no other instances of a Z to confirm, but I think X and Z may be the same character, and it was intended to say “NAZI!”

Majahal’s array is noted with I wonder what happened to Lebi? This probably refers to Carin, Lebi being the name she took on after forgetting her past. This, too, is a bit confusing because the I/Y character also looks like a J.

Trisha’s human transmutation circle just says Sorry Mom I’m sorry...

The circle for the Underground City is noted with To open the Gate?

The Grand Arcanum Philosipher’s Stone circle is labeled “Ishbalan?” and Ed has circled it.

AND THAT IT’S FOR THE NOTES, hopefully this is of some value to... someone out there, lmao.

[rakovic]

Detail. UNE FEMME MAORIE VERS 1890. PHOTO PUBLIÉE AVEC L'AIMABLE AUTORISATION DE SIR GEORGE GREY, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, AUCKLAND LIBRARIES

[sammattardn512-blog]

Six Burglaries in K Road interpretive breakdown.

Heritage image: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W1307.